Captain Hookup

This guy I’m having a casual thing with is quick-witted, is droll, and makes me laugh hard, and I just LOVE having sex with him. Afterward, however, he pretty much ignores me until we hook up again, not answering texts from me for weeks at a time. Although I see him consulting his phone constantly, he didn’t even text back “Sorry, busy” to my text inviting him over to watch the moon from my yard because it was so peaceful. I get that we’re not dating and that he wants his freedom, so I try not to call him names in my mind. But, then he turns up again, and I have a blast and get obsessed with the whole experience of him. I think I could be happy if he’d just reply to my texts and show me some attention that goes beyond the bed. Just a simple connection. Since I can’t insist on that, I guess I need help putting what I have into perspective so I can stop yearning and craving so much. —Longing

You want to believe you and he are on the same page. Yet here you are, basically asking him, “Come lie under the moon with me and listen to my heart beating” while he’s summing up what you two have with some well-known verse. No, nothing mushy from Shakespeare. That line on an unassembled moving box: “Insert tab A into slot B.”

Because it’s in women’s genetic interest to get men to commit to more than an hour of sexercise, many women seem to be neurochemically driven to feel clingy after sex. During sex, the hormone oxytocin, which has been associated with emotional bonding, is released in both men and women, but in most men, their far greater amount of testosterone gives it a beat-down. This disparity may lead to a conflict of interest — or rather, a conflict of lack of interest like you’re experiencing. But because you’d rather have this guy’s sex scraps than nothing, you’re all “Yeah, cool, no strings” while chasing him with a lasso and trying to forget that his favorite thing to do after sex is grab his shoes and clothes and sneak out of your house.

Even if you typically have the ability to keep things casual, it’s likely to be impaired if you choose poorly — if the man you’re having sex with is more Mr. Awesome than just Mr. Awesome In Bed. The clue that you can’t put this current thing into perspective is your inability to tell him, “Hey, text me back, because it bugs me when you don’t.” That’s surely what you’d do, no problem, if a friend had you on ignore. If you can’t accept what he’s not willing to give, you need to get out — and approach casual sex a little more realistically in the future. While being successful in love is about finding the right person, being successful in casual sex is usually about finding the somewhat wrong person — one who is decent in bed but inspires you to think post-coital flowery thoughts like “Umm…don’t you have somewhere to be?”